Spiral (season 1)

Spiral is a French television series that began in 2005. The French name is Engrenages which, translated, is ‘cogs’ or ‘gears’ referring to the justice system.

Season 1 consists of 8 episodes circling around the death of a girl whose disfigured body is found in a tip. It follows a police team headed up by fiery Captain Laure Berthaud and her team along with a prosecutor and judge. Each character has two sides and no-one is faultless and, as the story pans out, all the characters are influenced by friends, drugs or prior experiences.

As the season runs through, there are several other cases that are opened. Some are concluded, some are left with the viewer wanting to know the outcome. It’s a good watch, quite gritty and ugly in places. It’s hard not to compare to The Killing, despite this being 5 years before. The Killing does tell the story better and the acting is arguably better too, but there’s something about Spiral that kept pulling me in. There’s no doubt, I’ll be watching the next series.